Is the universe open or closed?

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Do catholics (lower case intentional, intended to include Orthodox and related faiths) believe that the universe is an open or closed system, thermodynamically? Feel free to reply from your own tradition, just please mention it isn’t a catholic opinion so I don’t get confused.
 
mek42 said:
Do catholics (lower case intentional, intended to include Orthodox and related faiths) believe that the universe is an open or closed system, thermodynamically? Feel free to reply from your own tradition, just please mention it isn’t a catholic opinion so I don’t get confused.
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Uncatholic view - the Universe is flat.
 
mek42 said:
Does flat imply a thermodynamic closed system? I was trained as a P Chemist.
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Don’t know. I’m going by what Lawrence Krauss concluded from observing the cosmic microwave background. To Krauss, a “closed” universe would mean that, in theory, if you could look far enough into the distance, you would see the back of your own head.
 
Just my unscientific opinion. I think it is closed, non-infinite, and rather spherical, in the sense that if one started traveling in a straight line in any particular direction, you would eventually after many light years, come back to your point of origin from the opposite direction, just like circumnavigating a globe.
 
Catholic scientist view: Guy Consolmagno ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-brother-guy-consolmagno-theology-and-astronomy

"Consolmagno: Well, we’ve got people working at the Vatican observatory who are actually looking into the mathematics of this, the physics of this. One of our cosmologists did his doctorate under Martin Rees, who is one of the people who’s come up with the idea. I think it’s a great idea both to make you think and to make you appreciate the infinite possibilities of creation. Back when Genesis was being written, and whoever wrote it took the best science of that day, which was Babylonian science, and said, “Bigger than the flat world that we all know we live on and the dome and the water above and below the dome, bigger that any of that was God,”and that was as big as they could imagine. If we say, “Bigger than the solar system, bigger than this galaxy, bigger than our universe, bigger than all of the infinite multiverses together, is God.”Then we’re really talking some big.

Fleming: It does seem to present a challenge but you’re saying it’s a challenge, really, not to religion but to the imagination.

Consolmagno: It is. A religion that doesn’t challenge you is not much of a religion and, frankly, a science that doesn’t challenge you is not much of a science."
 
mek42 said:
Do catholics (lower case intentional, intended to include Orthodox and related faiths) believe that the universe is an open or closed system, thermodynamically? Feel free to reply from your own tradition, just please mention it isn’t a catholic opinion so I don’t get confused.
Click to expand...
I think that the universe is neither open, nor closed, but flat.
 
mek42 said:
Do catholics (lower case intentional, intended to include Orthodox and related faiths) believe that the universe is an open or closed system, thermodynamically? Feel free to reply from your own tradition, just please mention it isn’t a catholic opinion so I don’t get confused.
Click to expand...
Universe is closed through itself but it is opened to upside universes. And universe is not distinct from exterior other universes.

The energy and matter have a certain measure in universe. So there is no increase or decrease in totally but there are continual transformations. In that sense universe is closed.

Angels could come to world from other exterior or upside universes. And souls of human come from other universes and after death go an other universes. Angel and soul have power and energy so in that sense universe is opened. And also all forces and energy are from God. I mean energy or power indeed have not mass or volume but those are manifestations of God’s power as laws. So universe is opened and indeed sustained by God’s effect.

I do not know the shape and form of universe but with other external universes all are like telescoped circles. Our universe is inmost and the next surround and enclose the internal. There are seven universes in that order. Our universe is more more minor than the next external universe and that go on so. The border finish by God’s existence in which there is no time and space so we cannot grasp or approach to.
 
mek42 said:
Do catholics (lower case intentional, intended to include Orthodox and related faiths) believe that the universe is an open or closed system, thermodynamically? Feel free to reply from your own tradition, just please mention it isn’t a catholic opinion so I don’t get confused.
Click to expand...
The church doesn’t teach scientific truths but rather leaves them to science. In other words, the church believes that the universe is exactly as God created it, which science will eventually discover.
 
The universe is ultimately open in the sense that it did not bring itself into existence.
Once created, we believe the physical universe and its underlying, principles, relationships, constants, those “laws” that define it, play themselves out.
For example, space is something, perhaps some form of energy, maybe small particles coming in and out of being randomly;
it is likely (imho) something totally different than we know and understand according to relativity and quantum mechanics.
Whatever it is, it seems to be expanding and at an increasing rate.
We don’t know why it is happening, but a better understanding of the universe would include whatever it is that is doing this.
We believe the universe is closed and seek to find those elements and processes, that it contains.
This is in line with the revelation in Genesis, of creation as having a beginning and being completed in an orderly, progressive fashion over a defined period of time, from which it continues.
 
Open 24/7 but closed on public holidays. Check your local papers for details.
 
A flat universe is simpler (because the topography of the universe is actually what we observe locally).

But it requires the mass of the universe to be a very precise quantity - just a little less mass and it’s open, and just a little more mass and it’s closed.

From a purely scientific standpoint, that sounds like a HUGE universe-sized coincidence (and I don’t like even small coincidences).

Of course, we could look at it theologically, and say that God deliberately made a flat universe. But I can’t think of why God would care one way or another.
 
DavidFilmer said:
But it requires the mass of the universe to be a very precise quantity - just a little less mass and it’s open, and just a little more mass and it’s closed.
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If we were ever able to prove that the universe is flat then it would be nearly irrefutable proof that an intelligence created it that way.

Because it’s staggeringly inconceivable that any random process could give rise to a universe with EXACTLY the correct mass to make it flat.
 
seagal said:
The church doesn’t teach scientific truths but rather leaves them to science. In other words, the church believes that the universe is exactly as God created it, which science will eventually discover.
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I’ll second this.
 
mek42 said:
Do catholics (lower case intentional, intended to include Orthodox and related faiths) believe that the universe is an open or closed system, thermodynamically? Feel free to reply from your own tradition, just please mention it isn’t a catholic opinion so I don’t get confused.
Click to expand...
The plane of existence that the earth resides within is infinite. All planes of existence are infinite. You can just say they exist within separate dimensions. As is, Heaven is an infinite plane of existence–it just dwells within another ‘dimension’.
 
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